G. Grant

From: G Grant [****@gmail.com]
Sent: 12 September 2011 10:51
To: McMillan David (AGC)
Subject: Hello David - a compliment note . . .

Hi David

I’m sending you a note about a fantastic recovery experience we had recently with Aviva car insurance and in particular your German agent. Paul Bencher, a friend of mine, gave me your email address so I hope you don’t mind a note directly.

By way of background, we recently took insurance for our new car with full European cover and breakdown. Day 1 into a long planned holiday to Croatia, we had a serious car accident in Germany caused by another vehicle that spun out ahead of us on the autobahn.

In a foreign country with young kids, ambulance and medical staff that didn’t speak English and a recovery system we didn’t understand – a very difficult situation.

Once we contacted the UK Aviva team, they informed us that Reuters repair would immediately take on all aspects of the case. I was initially uncertain how a repair centre could deal with the range of non-repair based issues to be resolved. Oliver Reuter, the owner of the business personally fronted the process with us and the service experience from that point on can only be described as exceptional.

Great service experience is made up of so many elements. Here are some examples of what we experienced:



1. Prompt communication. Any email sent to Oliver was answered very quickly, usually within the hour. He also made considerable effort to remain in contact with us throughout the balance of our holiday.
2. Clear and simple explanations about process helping us with some steps only in German language.
3. Quickly mobilised the case against the other insurer.
4. Showed tremendous empathy and personal interest in our situation. He listened carefully to the specifics of what we needed to do for the balance of our holiday and adjusted his approach to meet our requirements.
5. Worked his team incredibly hard to try to repair our vehicle in time for our return to the UK. When this looked doubtful (due entirely to the parts supply chain of the car manufacturer), he developed an option to get us home to the UK then deliver our car at a later date. As it turned out, they managed to finish the car in time and he personally delivered it to us the day before the ferry.

I understand that Reuters have been handling Aviva’s business in that part of western Europe for a number of years and I can see why. This is an incredible asset to your business and one worth talking about.

Until recently, I held a senior management role in a retail bank in the UK, and understand how difficult it is to deliver and maintain a high quality customer experience, particularly when the customer is in difficult circumstances. Customer advocacy is forged in these moments of truth. This is a superb example. I can only assume all customers at Reuters are treated this way as there was certainly nothing particularly special about our case.

I’m sure you, like I, often receive escalated complaints, so it is important to hear about the great examples of what’s going well in your business. There's no doubt I'll be talking about this to all my friends and colleagues. The cost of the premium becomes insignificant to the value of this kind of response.

RAC as your roadside agent had a couple of slip-ups that caused some issues but that’s another story and if you are interested I’m happy to send on that detail. But I want to focus this note on the outstanding service Reuters have provided.

Kind regards

G**** Grant